Xpedra Resources has secured the final NSW Government approval for its maiden drilling program at its fully-owned Springfield gold deposit near Gulgong, about 210km northwest of Sydney.
The drill rig is set to mobilise in the coming weeks, once it completes its current task, with a mid-to-late February start. The approval heralds the first drilling program at the project since 1999.
Xpedra completed the acquisition of the notably underexplored Springfield gold deposit in December 2025 and, since then, has moved fast to get the show on the road, securing execution of the land access agreement, appointing a drilling contractor and completing an initial site visit.
The initial program will comprise between 30 and 40 reverse-circulation (RC) holes for between 3000 and 4000m of drilling and is expected to run from February through to April, with assays expected in the March to May period.
The program aims to discover new or additional gold mineralisation through infill drilling to tighten continuity in known zones and by shallow extensional drilling north and south, where mineralisation is open to follow-up strong historical hits.
Those old hits included 27m at 3.65 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from surface, featuring 6m going 8.29g/t gold and 3m grading 9.23g/t gold.
Deeper drilling will be included in the program to chase-up depth extensions and to test standout historical intercepts such as 86m assaying 1.04g/t gold from 104m, including 12m running 2.90g/t gold and another 26-metre interval grading 1.83g/t gold.
The drill bit will also probe interpreted oblique structures that may control higher-grade zones.
Alongside the work at Springfield, the company plans to launch the first-ever follow-up drill program at Springfield North, about 500m north of the main Springfield deposit, where aircore drilling prior to 1999 returned 2m at 1.43g/t gold from 13m and 1m at 1.12g/t gold from 10m to end-of-hole.
This time, the drill bit will mainly focus on a mineralised intrusive body that outcrops over 1.7 kilometres of strike length.
Historically, only about 6500m of drilling across 186 holes has ever been committed to the project and most of those holes were shallow, averaging only around 35m depth.
Deeper exploration has been sparse, with almost no testing below 100m and nearly all work confined to a 500m-long southern corridor, leaving plenty of scope for undiscovered mineralisation at depth and along strike.
Although gold prices, which averaged about US$280 per ounce in 1999, were just high enough at the time to justify exploration, rising costs and a weak gold market meant drilling has not been carried out at Springfield since then.
However, now that gold prices are 17 times higher - at roughly US$4800 (A$6900) - modern systematic exploration, with its host of new technologies, can offer strong incentives to unlock the potential at Springfield and expand the project's scale and wealth.
With its final drilling permit secured and the rig expected within weeks, Xpedra is set to kick off active exploration at Springfield.
The company’s targeted, low-risk maiden program will focus on testing and extending the deposit’s known gold mineralisation, aiming to unlock strike and depth potential at a time of strong gold prices.
And as the drill rods start to turn for the first time in a generation at Springfield, Xpedra Resources is finally poised to find out just how much gold the historic site may have been hiding all these years.
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By Doug Bright
